Harvey: 49ers’ Harbaugh, Texans’ Kubiak have teams on different paths to top

Bo Schembechler, the late Michigan football coach, seldom met his match for hubris.

Start with Woody Hayes. You might also stop there unless you know the story of what occurred between Bo and Jim Harbaugh.

When Harbaugh was 12.

Schembechler played racquetball with one of his assistants, Jack Harbaugh, in the athletic facilities at Michigan, where Jack’s son, Jim, pretty much had the run of the place.

One day, Bo and Jack returned to the locker room after a game to shower and found Jim with his feet up on Schembechler’s desk and his chair tilted back.

“Jimmy,” Bo said, “you got your feet on my desk?”

“Yeah, Bo,” Jim replied, “I do.”

Jack Harbaugh has since told various versions of that story, but it always ends the same way, with Jim’s legs still up on Bo’s desk and the chair tilted back.

Now, Schembechler was maybe a bit more even tempered than Lord Voldemort. He could reduce 21-year-old, 300-pound offensive tackles to tears with a look. In this case, Bo turned to his assistant and said, “Jack, there’s something about this kid I really like.”

You know one of the differences between Harbaugh and Texans coach Gary Kubiak?

I can’t see Kubiak with his feet up on his own desk.

High expectations

Kubiak and Harbaugh have some things in common. Kubiak turned 51 on Wednesday; Harbaugh turns 50 next year. Both played big-time college football, Kubiak at Texas A&M and Harbaugh for Schembechler at Michigan. Both are NFL head coaches, Harbaugh starting his second season with the San Francisco 49ers.

Something else they have in common is the high expectations for their teams this season. If the fans are right, the Texans and 49ers not only will see each other Saturday night at Reliant Stadium in a preseason game but also in February in the Super Bowl.

But the approaches the teams are taking to get to New Orleans are as different as, well, Kubiak and Harbaugh.

“Jim definitely has an outsized personality,’’ said Oliver Luck, the former Houstonian whose son Andrew played for Harbaugh at Stanford. “He took some pretty soft Stanford kids and convinced them they could be as physical and blue-collar and lunch-pail as kids in West Virginia or Pittsburgh.

“He told them they were going to play smash-mouth football, and they did.

“Gary is more cerebral.’’

I’m not sure how many strings Kubiak gets to pull. But there is no question his calm, patient, “cerebral” demeanor is reflective of Texans management, including owner Bob McNair. Or else Kubiak wouldn’t recently have had his contract extended.

Harbaugh is 49ers management, or at least a large part of it, or else there wouldn’t be so much drama that he occasionally registers on the Richter scale.

“He’s crazy,” 49ers defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois said last season in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “Plus, he’s comfortable with the way he is. OK, we got us a ball coach.”

They got a ball coach who, while on the Stanford sideline, went for two late in the fourth quarter of a 52-21 victory over USC.

They got a ball coach who exuberantly slapped Detroit coach Jim Schwartz on the back instead of graciously shaking his hand at midfield after the 49ers beat the Lions last season.

Schwartz almost started a brawl by angrily chasing Harbaugh toward the locker room and took the brunt of the blame. But if you dig into the story, you’ll find Harbaugh was seething because Schwartz laughed at him earlier in the game when he made a mistake with his challenge flag.

If you laugh at Harbaugh, don’t turn your back on him.

Crazy? The Texans must be thinking the same thing about the 49ers.

Different strategies

The Texans were one Joe Flacco pass short of the AFC Championship Game last season and responded with a productive, though maybe not sensational, offseason. They added players through the draft and monitored the health of quarterback Matt Schaub, wide receiver Andre Johnson and running back Arian Foster.

The 49ers were two Kyle Williams’ fumbles short of the Super Bowl last season. They responded by adding wide receivers Randy Moss and Mario Manningham for a position that included Michael Crabtree. They also added running backs Brandon Jacobs and LaMichael James as insurance for an aging Frank Gore.

The Texans were as close to taking a look at Moss as they were at Charlie Sheen. The 49ers not only looked at Moss, Harbaugh worked him out. He completed 47 of 48 passes to Moss and is upset about the one he underthrew.

That’s the former quarterback who engineered one of the great success stories last season by reviving Alex Smith’s career. Harbaugh was so happy with Smith that he had Peyton Manning work out for him in North Carolina.

Maybe that was just a ploy to motivate Smith to re-sign with the 49ers.

Either way, it had everyone talking.

The Texans didn’t even whisper Manning’s name.

So which team has the best GPS directions (formerly known as a road map) to New Orleans?

Maybe neither. Maybe both. Maybe one and not the other.

One thing I am sure about is that Harbaugh and Kubiak are the right coaches for their respective teams, despite their different styles, and it’s impossible to get anyone who knows either to say a negative word about him.

In a competitive world where coaches sleep on their office couches, Harbaugh spent last Saturday night, less than 24 hours before the 49ers opened the preseason, at his high school reunion. I could see Kubiak doing that.